New Work-Dandy Annual 2017

Looks like this year I came back into the comics world with a crash, a bang and one of those stunt-man type rolls.

Not only did I get a very nice order from DC Thomson, creators of many titles including the Dandy comic, but I have been approached by a new prospective publisher (more about that on a separate post). But first let's get onto the Dandy Annual project.

Although I can't show you the whole page---sorry about that---I wanted to share sections and tasty tempters of what will be coming in the Dandy Annual 2017 (out around September 2016)

Some of you may know that I used to have a really great career in British children's comics until just
before the sad demise of the Dandy. (I'm pretty sure it wasn't ALL my fault).

Anyway, the Dandy, although no longer a comic, still comes out as an annual, with all the stars old and new. And this year I have been asked to produce a fair few of the pages for the weighty and welcome tome of merriment and mirth.

Amongst these commissions were three two page Ollie Fliptrik Pages, five Dirty Dick comic strips and an eight page Secret Agent Sally story; all scripts written by my own fair hand and produced by my own odd mind.

Now I could say a lot about the process, and how happy I am to be working for the great DC Thomson again, but you probably just want me to shut the *&%"% up and show you some brightly coloured pictures. Oh well, if that's what you want then who am I to argue with you, especially seeing as I have other 'how to' posts lined up and you can get your fixes then.

But for now, here's some sample cutaways (I'm not really allowed to show the whole page as that would be naughty and unfair and I would probably get shouted at by custard pie wielding lawyers---I honestly believe the comics industry employ such legal people). So here we go...

"It is also worth noting that all work is copyright DC Thomson, and that includes world rights and such stuff. You have been warned; watch out for the custard pie wielding lawyers..."

On another point you will notice that there are no word balloons. Although I did write the scripts, the lettering is still done and Thomson Towers...I have a sneaking suspicion that they have trust issues.

The last panel from a typical Ollie Fliptrik catastrophe.

I love drawing the snow, so when I get to write and draw, snow tends to feature largely.

Dirty Dick was a revived character from the golden age. Dick would go out clean and come back filthy; no matter how hard he tried; it was His thing.

Agent Sally was originally a collaboration between myself and Craig Graham, the Beano editor. But for the annual I got to write it myself. So guess what? More snow.

Now on a final point, I've added a before and after as seldom does an entire commission get away without a few amendments. In this case having seen the finished art, the editors asked me to change the last panel so the snow was removed and a hard rocky surface put in its place. So with the aid of a light box and some Photoshopery-jiggery-pokery I produced a page without having to redraw it all, as would've been the case 20 years BP (Before Photoshop)

I sincerely hope you enjoyed this post. If you did then please share it like a demented sharing person and keep on coming back for more of the same, and a whole lot more.

Live on Amazon---Ryan's Dinosaur Dreams

Finally, after I don't know how many attempts, emails and pleading letters, my first Children's book, Ryan's Dinosaur Dreams is, at last, ready to purchase through Amazon.

If you are new to this site and are wondering what on earth I am talking about, then please click here to find out more. But basically I've produced a 27 page children's book, lavishly illustrated and in full colour. Over the past few months I've been posting samples of the artwork and storyline for this project both here and on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Google+, all of which have received a very large and favourable responses.

So without and more of a preamble, I'd like to officially announce that the shop is open; Ryan's Dinosaur Dreams is now up for grabs on Amazon

For those of you in countries outside of the UK either go to CreateSpace or your own countries Amazon site and simply search for Ryan's Dinosaur Dreams.

Over the next few days I will be putting a permanent link on the side bar to save you constantly having to search for this post, also, and once Sleepy Hamlet has been completed and posted on Amazon and Kindle, I will give my publications their own tab on top of this page with links to all the Amazon  and CreateSpace sites that carry them.

Thanks, once again for all your kind comments and positive feedback regarding both Ryan's Dinosaur Dreams and Sleepy Hamlet and I'll be keeping you updated as to the next project; giving you more sneak previews and sample chapters or illustrations, proving that this site really is the Diary of a Cartoonist and Writer.

Thank you

If you like my blog and the things that I say and do, please tell your friends; mention me on Facebook, Twitter and any of the other fine social media networking sites you use. I would love to have my work reach a much larger audience and although I could no doubt eventually get there under my own steam, I'll get there a lot quicker with your help, so please, please spread the word.

Thank you

Ryan's Dinosaur Dreams--update

Cover for the book

Having worked every night for the past few weeks and filled every working gap of every single moment on these pictures, I'm only three illustrations off finally completing my first children's book, Ryan's Dinosaur Dreams.

I wont lie to you, it's been a baptism of fire. I've never done a children's book before; never written one or illustrated one; but somehow--- drawing it as I did initially for my grandson--- it made it so much easier to produce; and on top of that, I've got ideas for more children's books, graphic novels, comics,short story collections and novels. So please do keep coming back because y'man here is going in all kinds of new directions; I'm evolving, growing and expanding my horizons and ideas. It's all so new, so exciting and it's happening before your very eyes (hopefully).

Picture title: Teaching ballet to Brontosaurus

But meanwhile, back here on planet earth, Ryan's Dinosaur Dreams has turned out, as I've just said, to be a bit of a task; flying as I was without the metaphorical safety net of experience. And because I'm also publishing it myself through the medium of P.O.D. (print on demand), I've got all the technical on-line form filling and file uploading with only a cold heartless computer programme to guide me along the way--- with all the pit-falls and possible catastrophe's that they entail. Place this next to the fact that I'll also be launching my first Sleepy Hamlet tale--- a kindle novel--- and you can see that I'll be going through two pretty steep learning curves at more-or-less the same time. So if I go slightly off the rails, please forgive me.

Mind you, whenever I have a clash with technology, there always seems to be a story that comes out of it, like the wordpress v blogger post I did a while back. So I guess my suffering is usually your future entertainment.

Anyway, back to the book. I struggled with endless cover designs. At one point I had a very large and intricately illustrated front cover idea, and it would've looked spectacular, but I had to think of my audience: children of that age just wouldn't get it; I'd effectively
be drawing the cover for myself, which is not what this is all about.

So I went back to the drawing board. I tried this, and I tried that, I even tried a bit of the other, but nothing sat well in my mind and everything seemed  crass or amateurish.

So I did what I always do in situations like this: I walked away from it; completely forgot about the cover and put it to the back of my mind and thought: an idea for the cover will come to me. 

Now I know this sounds weird and a bit airy-fairy but it really works. I've been using this technique for over twenty years and it has never once failed me. I remember once when I had a twenty minute deadline to come up with a gag for a news story and my mind was white and empty with blind panic. So bravely---and I really mean, bravely---I chose to forget the story and do something else for five minutes. I actually gave my mind five minutes to come up with a gag that had eluded me for the best part of three hours, and within that five minute deadline an idea just popped into my head.

And here's the really strange part--- the bit I can never explain--- the gag I got wasn't anything to do with the train of thought I'd been pursuing before. It was a completely different angle and idea; almost like it had been written by someone else and handed to me.

Anyway, that's enough of the mind guru stuff. All you really needed to know was that this is my process and I applied it.

So about three days later I was skimming through my documents looking for something unrelated when I came across this image (see below), an image I'd already used for one of the inside illustrations. No sooner had I glanced my eye across it than the image at the top of this post just popped, fully formed, into my head.

I thought: 'but wont that be cheating, won't that just be taking an illustration from the inside and using it for the cover, where's the thought process in that, isn't that just a sell out?' and then another image came immediately into my mind of a selection of children's books I'd been reading recently while researching size and format for this one, and they'd all done just what I'd been thinking. They'd taken one of the illustrations from within the book and plonked it on the front. And I guess because I'd placed it within a box, laid it onto a background of stars, picked a colour scheme and designed and positioned the books title, it wasn't exactly 'just a picture from the inside'.

So with just a bit of creativity and the untapped power of the mind, I came up with a cover that I'm really happy with, and one that I hope you are to.

Hope you liked the little preview and the sample illustrations from the book. I will, of course, let you all know when it is finally ready for purchase and I'll also be adding a banner add on the side bar above where it links you to my Greeting card site.

Anyway, that's it for today but don't forget to come back on Friday for the page 20 (that's almost half of the way through), of our weekly webcomic Brabbles & Boggitt. 

See you then!

If you like my blog and the things that I say and do, please tell your friends; mention me on Facebook, Twitter and any of the other fine social media networking sites you use. I would love to have my work reach a much larger audience and although I could no doubt eventually get there under my own steam, I'll get there a lot quicker with your help, so please, please spread the word.

Thank you

Photoshopping a Dinosaur

I've been hard at it this week, producing the artwork for my first foray into the children's book market. The project has now past the half way post and is heading into the home straight.

Although at the moment its just a random selection of illustrations, it will soon coalesce into a book called Ryan's Dinosaur Dreams.

Originally it was a project I was going to do for my grandson on his birthday---and it still is--- but so many people have stated a desire to own a copy, I decided to offer it up as a print on demand (POD) book.

Of course the regular readers of my blog will already know this, but if you are new to our little corner of the web then please feel free to follow this link and catch up; don't worry we'll all just wait here for you.

Okay? All up to speed? Good, see I told you we'd wait; we were just sitting around, shooting the breeze and waiting for you to come back... we're good like that.

Anyway, I digress, as I'm wont to do on far too many occasions; let's move on to the purpose for this blog. This is another one of those 'behind-the-scenes' things I do from time to time; this one will deal with the Photoshop rendering of one of the cartoon illustrations from the Ryan's Dinosaur Dreams book...see, there is a connection. It's not just random stuff thrown up at the web...I'm digressing again aren't I?

Right, here we go. Ryan's Dinosaur Dreams--- a behind the scenes look at my Photoshop technique--- take one:

1. First off I scan my pencil and ink artwork into Photoshop as Black and White at 300dpi.
Once scanned I leave it as a Bitmap and clean up all the marks on the page.
I then click Image+mode+greyscale and thenclick Image+adjustments+levels and drag the dark cursor fully across and click ok and then do the same for the white.
Then I go back into Image+mode+CMYK; over in the layers box I click 'new layer' and select 'Multiply' from the drop down menu.

2. Next I chose my base colours and lay them flat using the 'paint bucket' tool.

Sometimes I work within the confines of a box or borders, but for these illustrations I wanted them to be soft edged and loose. I know the edges don't look very soft at present, but all will be explained in due course, my little pretties.

3. Now we come to the fun bit. This is where I give the characters a 3-Dimensional feel. I use a mix of the Air Brush tool; at around 65-100% and the pencil tool, usually at 19%. (These can be found on the left hand tower menu. It's the icon shaped like a pencil; the Air Brush tool is nested within the pencil icon box).

I select the area I'm going to be working on---in this case the dinosaur---clicked onto the mauve area with the magic want tool--- making sure that the 'contiguous' box is un-ticked. This means that when I airbrush in with darker colours it will only show on the selected area and not the other characters or objects around it. It's one of the very neat things about painting in Photoshop.

*Note: When you click the wand tool on your selected area a moving dotted line should highlight the area you've selected. If it selects an area outside of your chosen image it means you have a break in the line somewhere; deselect the magic wand (Ctrl+D), then connect up the broken area or areas and do it again. Also, those little dotted lines can be very distracting so to make them go away click Ctrl+H, this will hide the line but still leave your selected area selected.

I built up the layers of dark first, getting progressively heavier as I went on, while also thinking about the light source and how it would effect the dinosaur's muscle structure.

In this case, because its a night-time scene and its outside someone's house, the light coming out should be a soft yellow glow. Think where the light would hit and place it with the Air Brush tool, not the pen as the Air Brush has a softer edge to it and blends better. Also a good point to make: work with a lighter shade than you need, its always easier  visually to darken it later.

Once you've worked on the main character apply the same 'magic wand' technique to all the other objects and characters in your picture; always thinking about where the light will fall giving the whole picture a 3-Dimensional feel.

4. Once you've been around the whole picture, giving every character and object the same Air Brush and pencil treatment, its time to soften those edges.

This is really simple; all you do is make sure that you 'deselected' (Ctrl+D) the magic wand, select the Air Brush tool and select white as your colour and run it at 300%. Then just go around the picture and the white will automatically remove the hard edges and blend whatever it touches into a soft, feathered look. You can see the Air Brush in the picture above; it's denoted by the large circle.

A word of warning though: always make sure you never let the Air Brush tool touch your main characters; they must remain crisp.

Okay, that's it. That's how I produce an Air Brush cartoon in Photoshop and here's the finished piece of art.

Next week I'll be posting about my first short humorous novel about a village full of idiots, which is hopefully to be published later next month, and if I have time I'll post about the cover for my Ryan's Dinosaur Dreams book, but it may not happen until the following week.

Either way, don't forget to come back every Friday for the next page from my Brabbles & Boggitt graphic novel

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial? If you did and you've like to see more, including video tutorials, then  click here and let the learning continue! 

If you like my blog and the things that I say and do, please tell your friends; mention me on Facebook, Twitter and any of the other fine social media networking sites you use. I would love to have my work reach a much larger audience and although I could no doubt eventually get there under my own steam, I'll get there a lot quicker with your help, so please, please spread the word.

Thank you

My First Children's Book Project

Seeing as its World Book Day, today, I thought it would be a perfect time to announce that I've just started a children's book. A book that was initially meant as a Christmas present for my grandson, Ryan, but is now going to be a birthday present instead. But the other good news is that I'm so happy with it I'll be offering it up for sale through LuLu.com

Some of you may know that I've been limbering up for a big Kindle launch on my novels--- and I'll be talking more about that as the glorious day approaches--- but for today I'm just happy to announce that my first children's book---written and illustrated by myself---will be due for publication, and therefore purchase, around the middle of next month.

Its going to be called Ryan's Dinosaur Dreams and will, through 22 vibrant, action filled full colour illustrations, depict what Ryan dreams about while he sleeps at night.

Ryan, my grandson, is absolutely obsessed with dinosaurs; he has every toy, model, video and book you can imagine. At the age of two he could name at least twenty species (I kid you not, we would all be left open mouthed as these highly complicated Latin names came tripping off his tongue), but could also tell the subtle difference between an Allosaurus and Tyrannosaurus Rex.

So when it came to writing a book for him there could only be one subject: Dinosaurs.

I've added my first illustration as an exclusive to you, my loyal readers, and will whet your appetite over the next few weeks by posting a few more; then when its all complete and uploaded to LuLu, you will be the first to know!

Page 12 from Ryan's Dinosaur Dreams

I'm hoping for it to be a 24 page book, size 7 x 9 inches (landscape) and retailing at around £8.99, although the price could change.

So with a regular weekly updates of my ever popular webcomic, Brabbles & Boggitt, plus news of my new children's book, Ryan's Dinosaur Dreams, tutorials, humorous tales, the introduction of my Kindle novels--- and short stories projects--- plus all my usual posts about what I'm working on and developing, you'd be crazy to go anywhere else for your insights into the mind of an oddball cartoonist and writer.

Don't forget to come back tomorrow for the next mad cap installment of Brabbles & Boggitt in the Goldilocks Affair

Cheers

If you like my blog and the things that I say and do, please tell your friends; mention me on Facebook, Twitter and any of the other fine social media networking sites you use. I would love to have my work reach a much larger audience and although I could no doubt eventually get there under my own steam, I'll get there a lot quicker with your help, so please, please spread the word.

Thank you